This is my personal blog. I was Branch Secretary of Lambeth UNISON from 1992 to 2017 and a member of the National Executive Council (NEC) of UNISON, the public service union (www.unison.org.uk) from 2003 to 2017.
I am Chair of Brighton Pavilion Constituency Labour Party and of the Sussex Labour Representation Committee (LRC).
Neither the Labour Party nor UNISON is responsible for the contents of this personal blog. (Nor is my employer!)

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Saturday, July 01, 2017

The "left" and racism in a time of Brexit

Regular readers of this blog
will be aware that, after a quarter century on release to my trade union as a
full time lay official, and following fourteen years’ service in the purgatory
that is the National Executive Council (NEC) of UNISON, I have returned to
work.

I am therefore trying to
study for a work-related exam and had no intention of blogging at you this
weekend. Unfortunately, having expressed an opinion which some found
controversial I have been confronted with such a steaming pile of online ordure
that I have to say something.

Like many of you, I am sure,
I spend some of my online time in that privatised and corporately controlled
part of the internet which we know as Facebook. It was there that, after having
chaired a characteristically lively but also good humoured and largely
comradely meeting of the General Committee of Brighton Pavilion Labour Party on
Thursday evening I ventured to express a few views.

I deplored those who – it seems
to me – want to make support for Brexit a litmus test of support for Labour’s
leadership. Although this was in the context of Corbyn having dismissed three
frontbenchers for having signed up to a mischievous amendment from Chukka
Umanna it wasn’t that act to which I was referring.

Rather, I was alarmed that
some socialist comrades seemed to see the list of those (including leftwing
backbenchers) who had supported that amendment (some in good faith) as a “hit
list” for deselection, whereas in my view socialists can legitimately take the
view that free movement of labour is worth defending (and extending) and that
the membership of the EU single market is, in reality, in the interests of
workers in the UK.

I was quite prepared for
this view to attract opprobrium from some for whom support for Jeremy Corbyn
does appear to be more about a fan club than considered support for the
principles he has espoused all his adult life – and in particular from those in
the semi-detached fan-club who won’t actually join the Labour Party to provide
any effective support for the leadership, but are desperately keen to invent
reasons why they were right to line up with UKIP and vote for the UK to exit
the EU.

What I wasn’t prepared for
was a shocking display of (let me generously describe this as) unconscious
racism from socialist(?) “comrades” who could not handle being challenged about
their Lexit-obsession by a black person identifying the racist consequences of
last year’s referendum outcome.

One “comrade” seriously
asked a black fellow trade union member “Why
does a UK wide referendum effect you more than others?” Seriously. Asked.

I guess the spike in race
hate crime after the referendum result may be easier to forget if you weren’t
on the receiving end of it. However, the same individual, when it was put to
them (not unreasonably) that they would next be telling their interlocutor that
they had “a chip on their shoulder” responded with “no i wouldn't say you've got a chip on your shoulder. I’d say you've a
boulder on your back (covering both shoulders), which must be effecting brain
functions, which has led you to play the race card and call myself and anyone
else who disagrees with the public majority of the referendum, racist and a
white supremacist.”

Another “comrade” responded
to observations from a black comrade that “if
you were Black and/or an immigrant and been the victim of racist abuse (as I
have many times since June 2016) the views here may be different. But most of
you are not and can therefore choose to chase after UKIP voters instead of
recognising what is happening around you to your neighbours and friends who are
immigrants or children of immigrants like me.” with the response that “I'm from an immigrant working class family
who suffered racism from the moment they arrived in this country so your
tedious identity politics liberalism doesn't work on people like me but good
try.”

On another thread this same “comrade”
seriously (seriously) told a black person that they would be rescuing them with
a leftwing government in the context of dismissing the concerns which they had
expressed (“we'll be saving you from the
massive racism a right-wing Tory government would unleash”) – before being
demolished in debate by a young white comrade demonstrating that it is quite
possible to spot – and call out – prejudice even if one is not on the receiving
end of it.

To say that I am
disappointed to find that self-professed socialist activists have the same
grasp of racism which we sometimes find in newly arrived white managers in the
London Borough of Lambeth (who are invariably shocked to learn that the
organisation – sensibly – accepts that it is institutionally racist) would be
the least that I could say.

The capitalism in which we
live is the capitalism which depended upon and was shaped by the Atlantic slave
trade. Our cities (and our world) continue to be shaped by the consequences of
those centuries of racist genocide and oppression. Socialists who cannot see
the absolute centrality of this experience to our struggle today are as far
from socialism as those who think that gender oppression can somehow be
relegated for future resolution.

Twenty years ago UNISON
activists in local government in London fought hard to make our employers
accept their institutional racism. We forced them to commission research which
showed that white managers systematically favoured white subordinates and
admitted in interviews that the ethnicity of an employee was a powerful determinant
of whether disciplinary action would be taken against them. I was as shocked
then as I am now by the stark findings of that research.

I am not shocked – but I am
angry – that institutions can be so deliberately forgetful about their own
racism. I am both shocked and angry that self-proclaimed socialist activists
can be less intelligent and aware about racism than the institutionally racist
organisation for which I work.

Having said this, I can now
go back to revising for my exam. If you could avoid annoying me again for the
next week or so I would be grateful.

2 comments:

Anonymous
said...

I hope that if any of those of whom you speak of are unison members that you will do the right thing and report it under rule, as you have with other events that have occurred that are against the aims and objectives or rules of the union of which you are a member? Not to do so would be extremely hypocritical!